


Fellowship Divine

by Sororising



Series: SamSteve week 2016 [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Background Peggy/Angie - Freeform, Complicated relationship dynamics, F/F, F/M, M/M, Mention of childbirth, Multi, New Parents, SamSteve Week 2016, Surrogacy, background Bucky/Nat - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-08-07 23:49:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7734631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sororising/pseuds/Sororising
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for their new counsellor.</p><p>“Ah. I - actually, sorry, I don’t quite see,” Dr Martin said, looking like she’d rather be anywhere but her own office right then. “Could you maybe run that by me again?”</p><p>“Absolutely,” Sam said, and Steve could tell that he was taking an unreasonable amount of delight in this whole situation. “So, Stevie and me are together, but Steve’s soulmate is his childhood best friend, Bucky, and my soulmate is Natasha, who’s aromantic. Bucky and Nat are in a friends-with-benefits thing where they have sex on every surface of our apartment - oh yeah, we all share an apartment, did I mention that? - and me and Bucky pretend to hate each other but only because it annoys Steve and Nat.” He finally took a breath, then added: “Does that about cover it?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Day 3 of SamSteve week and I am actually posting (half) of this one on time!! Prompt was: Soulmates.
> 
> Title is from the hymn 'For All the Saints;' all my titles in this series come from it.
> 
> Edited August 2017: I was never happy with my day 4 SamSteve week fic, Rise In Bright Array, and so I have added it as an extra chapter to this one. Sorry for any confusion!

Steve couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for their new counsellor.

“Ah. I - actually, sorry, I don’t quite see,” Dr Martin said, looking like she’d rather be anywhere but her own office right then. “Could you maybe run that by me again?”

“Absolutely,” Sam said, and Steve could tell that he was taking an unreasonable amount of delight in this whole situation. “So, Stevie and me are together, but Steve’s soulmate is his childhood best friend, Bucky, and my soulmate is Natasha, who’s aromantic and thinks I sing out of tune, so we would never have worked out because my singing is a gift to humanity. Bucky and Nat are in a friends-with-benefits thing where they have sex on every surface of our apartment - oh yeah, we all share an apartment, did I mention that? - and me and Bucky pretend to hate each other but only because it annoys Steve and Nat.” He finally took a breath, then added: “Does that about cover it?”

“I - think so. How very, um - modern of you all,” she said, looking as though she really wanted to replace the word _modern_ with something along the lines of _fucked-up_ but was restrained by the fact that she was getting paid to be here. “So, now that we’ve got the backstory out of the way, can I ask why you two are seeking couples counselling?”

Sam opened his mouth again, and Steve decided that now might be a good time to step in.

“We want to have a baby,” he said, charitably ignoring the way Dr Martin’s eyes widened with something that he really hoped wasn’t alarm. “Me and Sam, I mean. Only we’re not sure how it would work, you know, with the four of us, and all the laws on custody in non-soulmate couples.”

“I see,” Dr Martin said, then paused for a moment. Probably buying herself a moment to think of a way to respond politely, Steve suspected.

“I assume that, ah, Natasha would be the one carrying the child,” she said, and Steve and Sam turned to look at each other with identical expressions of horror on their faces.

“No,” they said together.

“No way,” Sam added. “Oh, God, Nat would literally murder us if we suggested she get pregnant. Like, _literally._ She has the biggest knife collection I’ve ever seen.”

“Which will be carefully stored in a locked safe and will be nowhere near our potential child,” Steve added, glaring pointedly at Sam. “My ex-girlfriend, Peggy, has agreed to be our surrogate,” he continued, looking back at Dr Martin. “She and her main girlfriend, Angie, they don’t want kids but they’d be amazing aunts.”

“Her main girlfriend?”

“Oh, that’s just a sort of in-joke,” Steve said, his voice as matter-of-fact as if they were talking about the weather. “They’ve been together for years but they both date other people all the time. They like to swap stories about their worst first dates over dinner.”

“Right,” Dr Martin said, and Steve could see the exact moment she decided to stop following that line of questioning. Instead, she turned to Sam.

“And you don’t mind that the woman who might be carrying your child used to be in a relationship with your partner?”

“Why would I?” Sam rolled his eyes, but then sat up straighter when Steve kicked his ankle. “Okay, sorry, I know that was a reasonable question. No, I don’t. I love Peggy, and I really don’t think her and Steve are about to run off and have some kind of grand love affair.”

“I’m offended, Wilson,” Steve said. “You don’t think I could seduce Peggy?”

“I think you’re both so stubborn that you’d drive each other up the wall within a day,” Sam said, then winced at Steve’s second ankle kick. “But luckily you two are such wonderful, calm friends. You would create the perfect environment for any baby to come into the world.”

That was laying it on a little thick, Steve thought.

“Sam is going to be the donor,” he said to Dr Martin. “I have a few medical issues, so we thought it would be better that way.”

He was going to ignore the way Sam had let out a very fake-sounding cough when Steve had said the word _few._

“We were mostly just worried about the custody thing,” Sam said, and Steve could tell that he’d been psyching himself up for this moment. “None of the rules seem clear at all. Like, I heard about a case where a non-soulmate couple had a kid together, and the kid’s mom’s soulmate got jealous and filed for partial custody and won, even though he had fuck-all to do with anything.”

Steve winced as he remembered the day Sam had found that article. They’d been together since their third week of college, six years ago, and he hadn’t ever known until that moment that Sam had stored up quite such a varied repertoire of swear words.

“We aren’t worried about our soulmates,” Steve felt the need to point out, because the idea of Bucky or Nat doing anything like the guy in that case was beyond ridiculous. “But we wanted to be completely certain that we could both be recognised as our baby’s legal parents.”

Dr Martin. sighed. “Your situation is highly unusual, but not without precedent. Yes, if you’re willing to fill out a small mountain of paperwork, and if your soulmates and your surrogate - and maybe her partner too, to be on the safe side - are willing to come in and sign a few documents as well, then you’ll be fine.”

Steve couldn’t help the grin that came over his face at hearing that, and out of the corner of his eye he could see Sam had a very similar expression.

They were going to have a baby!

Holy shit. They were going to have a _baby._

Then Dr Martin held up her hand.

“One more thing, before you leave,” she said. “I must admit to some, ah, concern over your living arrangements. I’m not judging you for being a non-soulmate couple, so don’t take this the wrong way. But raising a child in a flatshare wouldn’t be ideal for any new parents.”

Steve relaxed. He’s been expecting something much worse than that. “Oh, yeah, we totally agree with you there,” he said. “We’ve already started renting the apartment across the hall from ours. It’ll be a kind of Friends set-up, instead of all four of us in the same place.”

Dr Martin looked happier on hearing that, which was a very fair response. They probably shouldn’t have brought up Bucky and Nat’s overactive sex life. Or the knives. The knives hadn’t been relevant to the conversation, Steve was pretty sure.

They said their goodbyes, and Steve couldn’t help but feeling well-disposed towards Dr Martin even when he could see the look of relief in her eyes as they stood up to leave.

She could think they were weird or disturbed all she liked.

None of that mattered now.

They were going to have a baby!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Managed to finish the rest of this! Hopefully I can now write a short sequel for the Parents day 4 prompt of this week, but no promises. Hope you enjoy :)

* * *

Sam felt like he was half in shock for the entire subway ride back to their apartment.

Steve was busy frantically texting everyone they knew the good news, so Sam couldn’t properly talk to him. Every time he lost signal on the train he would sigh much too loudly, and push his dumb floppy fringe out of his face where Sam knew it was just going to fall back down again.

God, Steve still looked barely any different from how he’d been in college. And in a year or so they were going to be parents.

Was this a good idea?

Sam knew that he had an annoying tendency to overthink everything. It came along with being a very self-aware person, which usually he was proud of. Studying Psychology in college probably hadn’t helped with the overthinking, he was willing to admit.

He felt bad for being a bit of an asshole in their therapy meeting, but to be fair their counsellor hadn’t exactly been a model of restraint herself, and she was the one who was supposed to be completely impartial when it came to her client’s lives.

So him and Steve weren’t exactly a typical couple. Who the fuck cared? They weren’t hurting anyone by being together without a soulmate bond. That was the same kind of bigoted, old-fashioned thinking that had tried to claim that there was no such thing as a true soulmate bond between different races - or between white people and anyone who wasn’t white, which was the only part they’d actually cared about - or that same-sex couples shouldn’t be soulbonded because of some quack psuedoscience theory that had claimed that children of soulbound couples had higher IQs.

So much bullshit in the world. And now that the various types of soulbound couples were finally accepted, the world had collectively decided that it couldn’t live without some form of bigotry, and had decided to turn around and condemn anyone who wanted to be in a relationship with someone who wasn’t their soulmate.

Bullshit.

“You okay, babe?” Steve asked in a very distracted voice. 

“I’m fine,” Sam said, not wanting to have another conversation about how fucking awful people could be when they were on a crowded train. For all he knew, they could be surrounded by pro-bonders right now, and he was very aware that Steve wouldn’t be able to resist retaliating if anyone made an insulting comment about their relationship.

Steve put his phone away when they were walking the couple of blocks to their apartment, taking Sam’s hand and linking their fingers together. Sam sighed. He couldn’t ever be angry with Steve for long, and he hadn’t even been mad at him anyway, not really. 

There was just - there was a lot that could go wrong, and even though Sam loved the idea of having a child with Steve in theory, in practice he still wasn’t quite sure.

“My true love!”

Sam looked up at their apartment window to see Nat hanging way too far out of it. He winced, both at the fact that she was one wrong move away from falling, and at the cheesy soulmate joke.

“Go inside!” Steve yelled up at her. “It’s good news! We’ll be there in a sec!”

They didn’t bother waiting for the lift; they were only on the fourth floor, and Steve’s asthma was so much better now that he didn’t even get out of breath as they climbed the stairs.

Their door was wide open when they reached it, but Nat was nowhere to be seen.

She emerged from the kitchen a moment later, holding a cupcake that had clearly just been very messily iced.

It read YAY in bright purple icing.

“What were you going to put if it was bad news?” Steve asked dryly. “Nay?”

“”Hey, it was a small cake,” Nat said. “We’re very happy for you. I’m going to be an excellent auntie.”

She said that in the sort of tone a dictatorish villain in a crappy action movie might have said _I’m going to take over the world._ Sam decided not to point that out. He did have some sense of self-preservation.

Sam honestly wasn’t sure why him and Natasha were soulmates. Other than the obvious aesthetic attraction, because she was objectively stunning, he had never really felt either sexually or romantically attracted to her. Platonic soulmates were a thing, obviously, but they were so rare that there was still debates in certain circles as to whether or not they actually existed.

They were great friends, though, when they weren’t needling at each other, and he knew that - although she couldn’t personally see the appeal of having children - she was genuinely happy for him and Steve.

“Thanks, Nat,” he said, taking the cake and tilting it so that the letters didn’t drip icing onto the floor. “Where’s my nemesis?”

“Bucky!” Nat shouted. 

It took a couple of minutes, but Bucky eventually emerged from his room, looking sleep-rumpled and wearing a t-shirt that had definitely belonged to Sam at some point in the distant past.

“Mmf?” he asked, completely incomprehensibly.

“Yeah, it’s all good,” Steve said, because he could more or less read Bucky’s mind. Or that was how it seemed to Sam, anyway, who would admit to more than a few moments of jealousy over Steve’s soulmate back when he’d first met the two of them.

He wasn’t bothered by their close relationship anymore, though; he’d spent enough time with them to realise that their dynamic, while weirdly intimate, wasn’t a romantic one at all.

Bucky picked Steve up in a bear hug - very awkwardly, considering he only had one arm to do it with - and glanced at Sam over Steve’s shoulder with a quick smile.

Sam did actually like Bucky, despite the rocky start to their friendship. To be fair, anyone would have been pissed off if their date's best friend had shown up on their first date and proceeded to list all the ways they knew how to murder someone and hide the body. 

“Shit,” Bucky said in a hoarse voice. “You’re going to be dads. Fuck me.”

Steve laughed, a pure, delighted sound that made Sam smile automatically in response. “Maybe start toning down the swearing, hey,” he said. “You’re going to be an uncle, after all.”

“When is Peggy going to - you know?” Nat asked with a very unsubtle grimace on her face. Sam honestly wasn’t sure why the thought of pregnancy horrified her so much. Maybe spending time around Peggy over the next year would convince her that it wasn’t the worst thing in the world to do to yourself.

“Not right now,” Sam said, hoping that Steve wasn’t about to contradict him. “There’s still a lot of paperwork and stuff we have to work through first. And there’s no guarantee she’ll get pregnant the first try, or anything.”

“She has very healthy eggs,” Bucky said, and Sam, Steve and Nat all stared at him in mild horror.

“How - how do you know that?”

Sam was glad that Steve had asked, because he really hadn’t wanted to. 

“I went with her to get her checked out,” Bucky answered as though his previous statement had been a perfectly normal thing to say. “She’s all good.”

“Um,” Sam said, because what the hell did you say to that? “That’s great, I guess.”

“Let’s go check out our apartment,” Steve said out of nowhere. “Buck, Nat, you can fend for yourselves for dinner.”

“We’re not children, you punk,” Bucky said. “Save that for next year.”

“You did once burn soup,” Nat pointed out. Sam wrinkled his nose at the memory; the apartment had smelt of scorched chicken for days.

Sam carefully placed their cupcake in the fridge before following Steve across the hall and into their new place.

They’d moved in a few spare bits of furniture, but it still looked very empty as he looked around.

Steve sat down on the floor. “I’m happy with what we have now,” he said, and Sam blinked.

“So am I,” he said slowly, sitting down opposite Steve.

“I don’t want kids more than I want you,” Steve continued, looking right into Sam’s eyes. “And I get the sense that maybe you’re having some second thoughts.”

Sam ducked his head, finding it hard to meet Steve’s gaze right then.

“You’re not wrong,” he said slowly, trying to find the right words. “But it’s not what you think. I - I want us to have kids, raise them together. I do.” It was true, he knew that without a doubt. “But - look at the world we live in, Steve. There’s so many bigots around still. People that might bully someone for being mixed-race, or the kid of a non-soulmate couple, or, hell, for being short. Do we really want to bring another human into that world?”

Sam looked up at Steve, scared of what he might see.

Steve’s eyes were kind, and understanding, and a little sad.

Oh, God. He shouldn’t have said anything, especially not - all that. But, well, things had never turned out great when he and Steve had kept secrets from one another - he didn’t even want to think about Christmas 2014 - and it had been building up inside him for a while now.

It should have felt like a relief to let it out, but Sam was mostly just feeling terrified right now.

“I love you,” Steve said, and, well, Sam knew that, obviously, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t nice to hear. “And you’re not wrong. There’s a lot of things wrong in the world, a lot of prejudices. But things are getting better, slowly, I think. I feel like choosing not to bring a child into our world because we’re scared is kind of like letting the bullies win.” Something which Steve would always have a lots of emotions about, Sam knew, for understandable reasons. “And if we had a baby, and raised them in a loving and accepting environment, wouldn’t that be a way of making the world just that little bit better?”

Sam hadn’t really thought about it that way before. He hadn’t really thought past the initial fear of what they might be inadvertently putting a child through, if he was being honest.

He decided to think about it now, properly.

He imagined a baby, loved more than anything by their very unconventional family. Peggy and Angie would be the more typical aunts; they’d probably give normal, practical gifts, like clothes and toys and books.

Angie would teach their child Italian, maybe, and how to cook all the incredible dishes that made everyone half fall in love with her.

Peggy would teach strength, and the steady grace that came from knowing you deserved a place in the world. She would also probably teach them how to shoot a gun, Sam admitted to himself, but they could cross that bridge when they came to it.

He realised suddenly that he was already thinking in terms of _when,_ rather than _if._

Their third aunt would love them fiercely, Sam had no doubt about that, but in a very different way. Nat would probably be more like an older sister, actually, he thought on reflection, offering unsolicited advice and showing up unannounced on their dates to terrify any potential partners into being on their best behaviour.

Wow. He hadn’t realised he was going to be thinking quite that far into the future. One step at a time.

Bucky - Bucky would be a great uncle, Sam thought with only mild surprise. He had helped raise his three younger sisters, and he had a wealth of embarrassing stories about Steve that would keep any child entertained.

Steve would be an amazing dad, of course. He was unfailingly kind, and he had a way of seeing the goodness in both individual people and the world as a whole that still took Sam’s breath away, after all these years. He was also stubborn as hell and refused to back down from any fight where injustice was involved, but maybe that wasn’t such a bad example to set either, really.

And Sam himself - well, he wanted this more than anything, he’d just realised. So whatever qualities he had that might make him a good father, he would work on them over the next year, making sure that he was as ready as he possibly could be to raise their child.

Oh, wow. _Their child._

“I want to have a baby with you,” he said in awe. “I want us to be parents.”

Steve’s smile was a small one, but somehow it lit up the room. Sam glanced around, no longer thinking of the apartment as bare or empty. It was full of possibility, he thought now - oh, there could be a crib there, with those cute little sheep mobiles dangling over it. Steve could paint a mural on that wall, maybe a forest one, with woodland creatures darting around. They could have a little bookshelf under the windowsill, with both their childhood favourites on - except the Velveteen Rabbit, of course, no matter what Steve said, because Sam was close to thirty and that damn book still made him cry.

“We’re going to have a baby,” he said, and Steve’s smile deepened, until Sam could see nothing but their mutual happiness reflected in his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aww. I hope I have time to write fic including the actual baby soon!
> 
> PS for those wondering, I'm not really a Bucky/Nat fan as they are in the MCU, but their comics dynamic can be pretty great and these are AU versions anyway.
> 
> Feedback is very welcome!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not a new chapter, sorry. This is the very short sequel, which I have never been happy with as a standalone fic. I may add new writing to this later, but for I am deleting the sequel fic and copying it here where it fits quite well. Sorry if I got anyone's hopes up!

* * *

Sam was startled out of sleep - and a very nice dream, which annoyingly he forgot straight away - by an absolutely hideous ringtone.

 _What the fuck,_ he tried to say, but it came out in a garbled mess of “Whuthuff?”

Steve already seemed completely alert; in the back of his mind Sam couldn't help but wonder if he’d even been asleep at all. He grabbed his phone and answered it, which thankfully made the irritating sound stop.

“Angie!” Steve said, in a much too high-pitched voice for this time of night. “Is everything okay?”

Well, Sam was fully awake now - he honestly wasn't sure if he'd ever been more awake in his life. There was a tight knot of panic that felt like it was twisting itself round his throat; he glanced at the clock on the bedside table -

Shit.

2.36am.

There was only one reason Angie would be calling at this time.

The baby.

Either - god forbid - something had gone wrong, or -

“The baby’s coming!” Steve shrieked - there really was no other word for that noise. “Oh, my god, Sam, Sam, our baby! Angie, wait, is Peggy okay? How’s she doing? Let me speak - no, wait, we need to get dressed, or, no, we can go in our pyjamas -”

Sam reached out and easily took the phone away from Steve, who let out one more loud squeak in protest but then occupied himself with stripping his pyjamas off as quickly as humanly possible.

“Angie, it’s Sam,” he said, trying to keep his voice as calm as he could manage right then. “We’ll be there as soon as we can, okay?”

“Sure thing,” she said, sounding amused with just a thin layer of panic below it. Sam glanced over at Steve, who was now hopping around on one leg, trying to put his socks on while standing up despite there being a perfectly good bed to sit down on not two feet away.

He's pretty sure he knew exactly how Angie was feeling, except Sam's panic would probably be obvious to anyone who looked at him right now.

* * *

They took a cab to the hospital. Steve alternated between asking the driver if he could possibly go any faster and apologising for being rude, interspersed with panicked glances at his phone, as though it’s going to ring any second to tell them that they're too late, the baby’s already arrived without them.

Sam doesn’t have a whole lot of personal experience with giving birth, obviously, but he’s done his research. And even if he hadn’t, plain common sense would have told him that it isn’t going to be over in thirty-five minutes, which is how long it’s been since Angie called them. But common sense wasn't always that easy to listen to, especially not when you were going to be a parent in maybe just a few hours.

Plus, they already knew that there was only going to be one visitor allowed inside the actual delivery room with Peggy, and Sam and Steve had both agreed that it would be Angie. She would know how to calm Peggy down - as much as was possible when you were pushing a tiny human out of you, Sam thought with a shudder - and besides, there was no way they could have picked one option out of the two of them.

At least this way they got to wait together, even if the next few hours were going to be some of the tensest of Sam’s life.

* * *

It’s over!” Angie called to them, and Sam felt simultaneously as though he hadn’t slept in a week, yet also like he’d never been more alive.

Holy - not shit, crap, holy fudge?

This whole parenting thing was going to take some getting used to.

Fu - _fudge._

Sam was a dad.

That was going to take more than a while to sink in, he was guessing.

Angie looked exhausted but very, very happy as she waved them through into the room where Peggy was lying on the bed, looking barely conscious but somehow happy at the same time.

God, what she’d done for them - they’ll never be able to repay her for this, and he knows that she doesn’t think of it in those terms, but that just makes it even more special.

Sam had a tight grip on Steve’s hand - he needed something to ground him - and he felt Steve twist round to look at the nurse who was just coming back into the room, carrying - carrying -

_Oh._

“They’re so beautiful,” Steve said, and for one wild moment Sam thought that they were going to be raising unexpected twins.

Then he remembered that everyone in their unusual little family had decided to stick with neutral pronouns, until their child was old enough to decide for themself.

“They’re amazing,” Sam said in a choked-up whisper, not wanting to disturb the moment with anything louder. Part of him felt like he wanted to start shouting and crying in joy, so he was going to keep himself calm until that was under control.

The nurse clearly didn't know which of them to hand the baby to - _their_ baby, oh, the next few weeks are just going to be full of those moments of dissonance, and Sam’s going to love every minute of it - and ended up going with Sam.

The fact that it was probably just because out of the two of them he was clearly the only one that could be the biological donor would annoy him at any other moment, but even Steve didn’t look like he was thinking anything but joyful thoughts right then.

Sam cradled their child in his arms, and Steve gently held them both in his embrace, and nothing, nothing could ever ruin this moment.

“You’re going to call, ah, them Pegange, right?” Angie said, probably with her usual wicked little smile. Sam was too focused - entranced, really - by the way their baby was wiggling their impossibly tiny fingers around to actually look at her.

“I did not go through hours of agony for the child that came out of me to be saddled with the most appalling portmanteau in history,” Peggy said, in an impressively strict voice for someone who looked like she should be on the verge of passing out.

They both knew that Peggy and Angie are only teasing them, but Sam and Steve still exchanged a mild look of horror over their baby’s head.

Sam gently passed them over to Steve, who took them with a reverence that made Sam’s heart ache in a way he didn’t ever want to live without. Wasn't sure he _could._

“We already chose a name,” Sam said, meeting Steve’s eyes and seeing the love he’s feeling reflected there, passing between the two of them in an infinite mirror-loop.

“We wanted something that goes beyond all the soulbond issues, all the problems people have to deal with every day on this planet,” Steve continued; they’ve talked this through so many times that he knows exactly what Sam’s next words would have been. “A name that isn’t tied down to stereotypes, a name that they can grow into without having to live up to anything in particular.”

Peggy and Angie both looked slightly teary-eyed, though Sam knows better than to point that out.

“Skye,” Sam and Steve said together, holding their child between them. “Their name is Skye.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know a couple people who were raised in a gender-neutral way (insofar as that's possible in this society) and I've always wanted to explore that in fic. I think I'll definitely be coming back to this one, though for now I have deadlines for other fics that I need to meet.


End file.
